[Kamiya PoV]
That name struck my chest like a bolt of lightning.
Stella.
Not an unfamiliar name. Not unfamiliar at all.
But the way it left her lips, followed by a sharp yet question-filled grey gaze, told me this was no ordinary coincidence.
I held my expression in check. Years of training myself not to show emotion in the most critical moments had made me skilled enough at that. Yet behind the composed face of "Hajime Sitri," the boy who was once called Kamiya Hyoudou felt something he thought he had buried long ago.
A memory.
"Hajime Sitri." I replied in a flat tone, introducing myself by the name I now used. "A pleasure to meet you, Stella-san."
Stella straightened her posture, her eyes continuing to fix on me with intensity.
"You know... I found something interesting." Her voice was low, barely audible to anyone but me. "The stigma I showed you just now... your reaction cannot be called the reaction of someone seeing it for the first time."
A brief silence fell between us.
Behind me, Asia was still focused on healing my wounds. Suzu stood beside her, occasionally glancing toward our conversation with a face still slightly flushed from her earlier tears.
"A stigma like that is not common," I answered at last. "It is natural that my reaction showed a little surprise."
"Surprise?" Stella tilted her head slightly, as though weighing my words. "No. What I saw was not surprise. What I saw was... recognition."
She was sharp.
Sharper than I had anticipated.
I exhaled slowly, the only outward sign that I was considering my next move.
"What is it that you actually want to ask, Stella-san?"
Stella held my gaze for several seconds before answering.
"I am looking for someone." Her voice was quiet, yet its weight reached me fully. "Someone who was once part of a project that should never have existed. Someone bearing the same stigma as the one on my body... and perhaps the one on yours as well."
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[Stella PoV]
I studied every detail of the young man's face before me.
He was too well-trained to give a clear reaction. Yet there were small things that could not be hidden, the way his breath slowed slightly when I mentioned the project, the way his previously relaxed fingers curled just a little.
I had spent years searching for clues about those who had managed to escape the Stigma Project. Twelve subjects. Of the twelve, only I was recorded as 'surviving with stable status' in the official report.
The others were declared... missing. Or destroyed.
But I had never fully trusted that report.
"That project has ended," he said at last, his voice remaining flat.
"For some people, perhaps." I watched the blue light that occasionally flickered in his eyes. "But its effects have never truly ended, have they?"
Silence.
From a distance came the sound of Suzu calling to Asia to check on something. That moment was enough to create a small pocket of privacy between the two of us.
"I am not here to dredge up the past." I kept my voice as calm as I could manage, even as my heart beat faster than usual. "I only want to know... whether you are all right."
That question, as simple as it was, seemed to make something behind the young man's composed gaze waver for a moment.
Perhaps because no one had ever asked it of him in quite that way.
Perhaps because he realized, without a single word, that I understood what he had once been through.
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[Kamiya PoV]
"Whether you are all right."
Four very simple words.
Yet those four words felt like a stone thrown onto the surface of a lake I had worked so long to keep still. The ripples spread, touching parts I had not allowed to move for a very long time.
I looked at Stella.
In her eyes I saw no manipulation. There was no hidden agenda of the kind I could usually read from people I had faced. What was there instead was something rare and unfamiliar.
Understanding.
"...Well enough." I answered at last. Not a perfect lie, but not the full truth either.
Stella gave a slow nod, as though accepting that half-answer as sufficient.
"Same here." She said simply. "Well enough."
And strangely, I believed her.
Two people once broken by the same thing, standing amid the wreckage of a dragon's battle, sharing the most honest offering they could make to each other.
That was enough. For now.
"Stella-san." I reopened the conversation before she could leave. "If you plan to stay in Kuoh... there are things here that are far more complicated than they appear. Please be careful."
Stella glanced at me from the corner of her eye, and then a faint smile curved at her lips, the first expression that looked truly human since she had approached me.
"The same advice to you, Hajime Sitri."
With that, she turned and walked back toward Sienna and Rexa who were waiting for her.
I watched her go, feeling the weight of that brief exchange still settling in my chest.
Behind me, Asia finished healing the last wound on my back.
"Hajime-san, do you know that woman?" Asia asked in her usual innocent, curious tone.
I turned to find Asia watching me with her clear green eyes, while Suzu stood beside her wearing an expression I could not quite read, something between exhaustion, relief, and something else I could not name.
"No." I replied.
Suzu held my gaze a little longer than usual before finally looking away.
"...That's a lie." She murmured quietly, just barely within my hearing.
I did not answer.
Because perhaps it was.
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In the sky beginning to redden with dusk, the debris from the dragons' battle still lay scattered across the academy grounds.
Issei remained unconscious, his breathing now steadier thanks to Asia's healing.
Rias, Akeno, and the others gradually gathered, each carrying their own wounds and exhaustion yet united in the same shared relief that the battle had ended, at least for today.
I stood slightly apart from them, gazing toward the horizon where every trace of Vali's and Bikou's energy had now fully vanished.
Gremory and Sitri.
Dragon and human.
And somewhere within the web of all of this, a person named Stella who carried the same stigma as mine, a scar that could not be seen yet was felt as something real with every single breath.
Kuoh was growing ever more crowded with variables that could not be predicted.
And along with that, the room for me to move was growing narrower.
But surrender was not a word that existed in my vocabulary.
Not before. Not now.
Not ever.
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